New York moves fast. But if you know where to look, it also knows how to slow down.
I stayed right on the High Line, in that perfect spot where the city meets nature—or at least the version of nature that’s been sculpted into an elevated park. It’s a place that shouldn’t exist—a repurposed freight rail line turned into a green space floating above Manhattan—and yet, here it is, seamlessly integrated into the city.
The graphic designer Paula Scher—one of the greats—designed the High Line’s logo. Simple. Geometric. Two parallel lines crossed by a single horizontal bar, evoking both the old railway and the new park. She talked about it in Abstract: The Art of Design on Netflix, about how typography and visual identity shape our experience of place. And when you’re walking the High Line, you feel it. You’re not just moving through the city; you’re moving through something carefully considered.
In one direction: Hudson Yards—all glass and steel, towering ambition in physical form. In the other: the path down to the Whitney Museum and the piers, where the city breathes a little, stretches out toward the water.
At Pace Gallery, I stood in front of a Chuck Close painting and just… took it in.
You can see it online, sure. You can read about his process, how he worked within the limits of his body after his spinal artery collapse, how he adapted, how he kept going. But standing there, seeing the details—the grids, the color blocks, the way the image dissolves up close and then reforms when you step back—it’s different.
What stuck with me wasn’t just the work itself but the persistence behind it. The fact that he found a way. That he didn’t let his circumstances stop him from making something. And isn’t that the thing? Figuring out how to keep creating, despite everything.
I walked out of the gallery wanting to make something. Not necessarily a Chuck Close kind of thing, not even a painting. Just something. To stop overthinking and start.
For a few days, I let myself settle into a rhythm—gallery hopping, walking for miles, then sitting in some coffee shop with The Creative Act by Rick Rubin. A book that, in a way, is less about creativity and more about being present in the act of making.
There’s this part that stood out:
“All that's in your control is making the thing to the best of your ability. It's all an offering to God.”
— Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
I had to stop, let that sink in.
Now, I don’t really consider myself spiritual these days. I joke that I’m a recovering Catholic—which is to say, I grew up with it, I left it, and yet, it still lingers in the wiring of my brain. But when you lose a parent, when you get older, when you start to feel time in a different way—you think about what you’re leaving behind.
Not in a grand, legacy-building way. But in the small ways. Did I create something? Did I leave a light on for someone else? Did I do something that made the world a little better, even just for a moment?
That’s the thing about a place like New York. It makes you ask these questions. It surrounds you with people who are creating, who have no choice but to create. You walk past an artist setting up on the High Line, a dancer practicing in a studio window, a poet reading to no one in particular in Washington Square Park. They’re not doing it because someone asked them to. They’re doing it because they have to.
And for three weeks, I let that energy pull me in. I thought about Chuck Close, about Rick Rubin, about my own work, about the people I’ve lost and the ones still here. About how creating is a way of marking time, of leaving something behind, of saying, “I was here.”
And maybe, that’s enough.
